Deep Cover
by GMsTales
Summary: Note: I'm currently GM-ing for a Dresden Files RPG group. The stories I'm posting here are based on our gaming sessions, and characters. Characters are original work, but most are not mine. The ones that aren't mine are used with the permission of their creators.


Alexis

…Well fuck.

I should have known that weasel wouldn't pay. Oh wait, I did. Travis thought he was being clever, setting up his little double-cross, putting the meeting at a 'neutral' location that he had already thoroughly compromised. Adorable. Offering to use a broker that I've used before, one that I have developed a trusting working relationship. After, you know, having a member of his cult thoroughly mind-fuck her up. It's not the backstabbery that offends me. Oh goodness not that. It's the sloppy work that really pissed me off.

Anyway, that son of a bitch pulled out all the stops: Public place with lots of people around, broker that I knew and trusted, agreed to pay whatever I asked in whatever currency I asked for. It was the score of a lifetime. The only catch: I had to infiltrate the fucking Vatican. Not just the Vatican, but the secure vaults under the secure vaults beneath the Vatican. They didn't want just any old piece of shit. They wanted the Fucking Unholy Fucking Grail.

First step in any job is to case the joint. Luckily for me, I keep a stack of squeaky clean identities around for just such an occasion.

And that my friends is how Lilly Kristine Hansen, Danish housewife, decided to take a vacation from her workaholic husband by taking in the sights of Vatican city. No cow on the ice, right?

It was about halfway through the tour when I broke off from my tour group, just bent down to tie my shoe and they left me behind, too occupied looking at the 'stunning view of the basilica' to notice that I wasn't with them. Oops! I backtracked to the Grotta di Lourdes, where a disgruntled former member of the security detail told me I could find the passage to the next obstacle.

I noticed the telltale signs of the secret door I was looking for hidden in the back of the faux cave. Some people (read: morons) think that hiding a door in plain sight makes it harder to find than something hidden properly. Now if only I knew where the catch for the door…Ah! Found the catch to open the door at the base of the stupid statue ensconced in the cave wall.

Best part of a daytime caper? Everyone expects you to be a) walking around the place, and b) stupid (I'm sorry mister guard, I seem to have lost my tour group!). Next tour isn't due for 15 whole minutes. Heh. Might as well be an hour. I got to work on opening the door.

According to my research (it pays to know just how people are planning on trying to stop me from getting their stuff), there was a secret vault under St. Martha's Chapel (I bet you thought it was going to be the Basilica, didn't you? Nope. The Basilica is really just for the tourists). Anyway, the door at the back of the Grotto leads to a secret passage, that leads to a vault, that leads to an even more secret (secreter? Secreter) passage. At the end of that is a vault that was actually pretty impressively hard to learn about. Someone in this city is halfway competent, maybe better than half. They just aren't me.

Once I got the door open, my next step was to get down to the secret vault through this pitch-dark passage. I cracked my glowstick necklace (Mrs. Hansen loves nightclubs. One of the things she and I have in common actually), and set off down the dark path (spooky right?)

The passage had a bunch of pressure plates hidden in the floor. Not even electronics, these were oldschool spring loaded jobs. It's cute the things so-called 'security specialists' think will keep me out – but then if they were thinking of me they would have done a better job, right? Whatever. I used a whisper of invisible force to keep the plates from moving, and did a jig on the biggest one just to spite the dried up old priest who put it there.

At the end of the passage was a door. Capital 'D' Door, more like. This thing was 8 feet tall, 6 feet wide, and if my research is to be believed, 2 feet thick. Solid iron, with some kind of runes all over it to 'prevent the devil from finding purchase'. Now I'm no angel, but whoever set up these defenses to stop evil never expected to run up against a professional. And that right there sums up the problem with religious thinking: Fanatics work cheap, but professionals get the job DONE. I got out my tools and got to work on the door. (You'd never believe how much useful stuff can hide in the boning of a good brassiere. Besides, my working rig looks really cute!). Ten minutes later (Rust is a bitch) I was in the secret vault.

Secret yawn is a better description. I mean somebody saw too many Indiana Jones movies or something. There were hundreds and hundreds of cups, chalices, tumblers, shot glasses, made out of all kinds of materials. The only one that was presented with any flair was a wooden cup on an altar at the far end of the room. It even had a spotlight on it! Must have been a rod of crystal going all the way up to the ground for that natural light. So cheesy. I couldn't resist the cheese: "You have chosen…poorly" I muttered as I disabled the electronics in the altar and descended into the even secreter passage.

This was where things got interesting! My research says that this vault was set up in the early 1300s after the grail was taken from a Satanist cult who was trying to open a portal in the middle of Norway. Why Norway? Who knows. Probably thinking the 'great master' would give them dominion over all the leggy blondes or something. Morons are morons in every century. When the Mother Church brought the grail to the Vatican they dug out a dungeon for it, setting traps medieval style to kill the unwary and the unpious (impious?). The good thing about putting things in a dark hole is that it's hidden really well. The bad part is that it's really hard to upgrade security in places like this without letting people know that you're installing some heavy defences. In fact Travis and his people learned about this vault 20 years ago when the god-botherers installed the runed steel door I went through earlier. If the installers'

notes are to be believed, it'd fry anyone with demonic influence who tried to pass through the door. Guess that means my powers don't come from down below, right?

Heading down the secreter path was a lot brighter and cheerier than the last one. The walls were lit every 10 feet or so with some more of those crystals coming out of the ceiling. And it was decorated. Sure it was decorated with crosses and stuff, but it was still decorated. I made my way down this one very slowly, being careful to check for traps. This is the part of the job I didn't have any info on beyond the fact that it was here. Don't let the rosary fool you: Those priests are vicious when they think they have something to protect. I guess 'thou shalt not kill' isn't always that important.

I found seven different traps: Two ancient tripwires, three triggers that would bring the passage down on my head, and the boobytrap on the door was itself coated in an oily substance that I'd bet hasn't lost any efficacy since it was put there back before 1400.

Getting through this door was tricky. Seventeen different keyholes, each needing a different shaped key, all needing to be turned at the same time, or a similar number of steel and silver rods slide through the door and lock it down permanently. Especially for when it was made, this was really cool. Getting to see this kind of thing is what inspired me to pull jobs in the first place. I think if I were normal, there's no way I could have gotten through. Lucky I'm me though! I took a calming breath and reached out with my mind, pushing out like I learned to do when I was a little kid.

Some people call it psi, some call it magic. I just call it my special talent. I can create, shape, and move shapes made of pure force at will. That lets me do things like do a jig on the pressure plates in the secret passage without worrying that I'll trigger it. My talent also lets me do things like extending seventeen tiny tendrils of force and fit them to the tiny tumblers of each keyhole, slowly shaping them into perfect little keys. Once I had them all formed and in place I turned them all at the same time and the door opened, leaving me standing in the open doorway of what might well be the most secret location I had ever opened. Fuck, I love being me.

It was empty. Fuck, I hate being me.

Nope. It actually had an altar made of lead in the center of the room, and there was a simple wooden cup sitting on it right in the exact center of the altar. This room was practically buzzing with power. You know that feeling when you stand next to a power station, like the air is vibrating? Something like that. I took a step toward the altar, and the buzzing got louder. I took another, and it got painfully loud even though I was still three steps away. I guessed that was as close as the altar was going to let me get. Okay then. I took a calming breath and reached out with my special talent-

Okay that hurt. A lot. When I woke up I took a few minutes to reassess. Stepping to less than three steps away hurt too much, but reaching closer didn't. Obviously my talent was out. I tried using the wires from my working rig, but they weren't long enough…

Eventually I ended up using a combination of my jeans with the stiff wires as a lasso to grab the grail and pull it to me. Once I got that done, I put my pants back on (wouldn't do to pop up out of the Grotto without pants, would it?) and retraced my steps on the way out. The so-called unholy grail was roughcut wood, but it seemed warm in my hand and later had a comforting warmth in my bag on the way home, and then off to Canada. As far as I know the Vatican still doesn't know that they've lost one of their most secret 'treasures'. After all, if you check on something like that often you lose the value of secrecy.

I watched Eddie's place for two days before I called him. Eddie was one of my favourite fences, having contacts all over Ontario and Quebec who were interested in buying beautiful and ancient things. I don't care personally, but I guess when you're not surrounded by this junk all the time you get the urge to own as much of it as you can. Personally I just like money.

Anyway, Eddie was surrounded by these thugs. The grail in my bag told me that they were in Travis' crew (She had a very rich, throaty voice. Man I miss that voice! Made me shiver all the way down my spine). Like I was ever going to walk in there with some muscle I didn't recognize hanging around. The things She told me just sharpened my suspicions. They were bad guys, and I mean really bad. Like, Travis has a fallen angel in his head that's so bad that the devil kicked him out kind of bad. He was the kind that would never stop looking for me. So it was time for Alice Kinder and the unholy grail to disappear for a while, the less metropolitan the better. I found an ID guy that She and I both trusted, and bought tickets for 14 destinations in North America, choosing randomly right at boarding.

When I arrived at the tiny airport in Saskatoon Saskatchewan after stashing Her in an undisclosed location beside Jimmy Hoffa, there was a guy waiting for me. He was some kind of cop, wearing a charcoal suit with a powder blue shirt on, and he was dangerous. He had that way of looking at everything and nothing at once that made me nervous even before I met Her. He homed in on me and approached. "Hello Ms. Croshaw. My name is James Tyveck and I'd like a moment of your time. Can I buy you a coffee?" He drove us over to one of the obnoxious Tim Hortons' coffee shops that they have in Canada. Once we were seated he stared at me for a minute, then the pitch started.

"Alexis Croshaw. Lilly Hansen. Alice Kinder. Linda Bailey. Lake Slant. Alara Vasher. I could go on but I think I've made my point. You are not the only person in this world with a special talent, and not all of us are good people."

I just stared at him, not denying but not agreeing. She told me a little bit about the world while we were together.

"There is a darkness coming Alexis. You have talents that could make the difference between it winning and losing. I think you know something about what I'm talking about, yes? You look like you've been touched by the darkness."

"Hypothetically, what would you want me to do? I'm not a fighter. I just do a job."

"That's true, but I have a feeling you won't be doing any jobs for a while. And I suspect that having someone watching your back for the next few years might be useful. I'm putting a team together like I

said. We have fighters but what we really need is someone like you. Someone who can find and go into the secret places, taking things from the Enemy." He looked pointed at me "Things we can't let them have."

"And if I joined your team, what's in it for me?"

"We're a team. Those fighters I mentioned would be watching your back just as much as mine. I keep an eye out for threats to my team, and we eliminate them. As long as we're on the side of the angels, that is." He actually smirked! I started to think he knew a lot more than he should about my life.

"How do you know so much about me? And what makes you think I'd be a good fit anyway? I'm a criminal."

"I have my own talent" He tapped his left temple. "I'm usually a fairly good judge of character. I think you'd be a good fit with the group I'm putting together." There was that smirk again.

That smirk bothered me. She did warn me that Travis wasn't going to stop coming though…

"I'll try you out for a while. If you betray me, or I see anything that spooks me, I'm gone. No questions asked. If Tr-anyone comes after me, your team will defend me."

"Our team. And welcome to it!" He got up and offered his hand to shake. I took it, and he passed me a business card.

"Come join us at this address at noon in 3 days, I'll introduce you to the rest of the team. For now, I think you have some living arrangements to make. I'll leave you to it."

And he left easy as that. I gathered my bags (thrift shop purchases. No-one travels cross country without a bag unless they want to gather attention) and headed out into the small city that was going to be my home.

You know, for a while.


End file.
